What went wrong after Holland?

[Nicko1234]

From another perspective, I think it's actually a crucial album in terms of their legacy, for younger fans getting into them later in the game (i.e. myself, in the 90s).  It's a bump of, at least, genuine weirdness in what would otherwise be a long unbroken stretch of mediocrity and blandness, and in that respect I think it's really important.  If you approached the group primarily from the Pet Sounds/Smile axis, as I did, you're hungry for more of that kind of weirdness.  Admittedly, in the beginning I was pretty much all about Brian and was a bit slower to warm to the group-led period, but Love You for me, was the Brian-led signpost that said it was always worth looking deeper.  And  "look deeper" is pretty much the one thing every new Beach Boys fan should learn.

Weirdness?

Loads of people approach the band due to Pet Sounds' greatness. Not weirdness. It shouldn't be about, 'oh, isn't it wonderful that Brian was so crazy'.

[anazgnos]

From another perspective, I think it's actually a crucial album in terms of their legacy, for younger fans getting into them later in the game (i.e. myself, in the 90s).  It's a bump of, at least, genuine weirdness in what would otherwise be a long unbroken stretch of mediocrity and blandness, and in that respect I think it's really important.  If you approached the group primarily from the Pet Sounds/Smile axis, as I did, you're hungry for more of that kind of weirdness.  Admittedly, in the beginning I was pretty much all about Brian and was a bit slower to warm to the group-led period, but Love You for me, was the Brian-led signpost that said it was always worth looking deeper.  And  "look deeper" is pretty much the one thing every new Beach Boys fan should learn.

Weirdness?

Loads of people approach the band due to Pet Sounds' greatness. Not weirdness. It shouldn't be about, 'oh, isn't it wonderful that Brian was so crazy'.

I don't think it's anything do with with fetishizing mental illness.  If you don't think the Beach Boys ever got weird, musically, on purpose, I don't know what to tell you.  It's not the only quality, but it was something that I picked up on when I was first getting into them, and I'm sure other people did as well.  Fortunately I didn't encounter anyone who told me I was only allowed to appreciate their "greatness".

[Nicko1234]

I don't think it's anything do with with fetishizing mental illness.  If you don't think the Beach Boys ever got weird, musically, on purpose, I don't know what to tell you.  It's not the only quality, but it was something that I picked up on when I was first getting into them, and I'm sure other people did as well.  Fortunately I didn't encounter anyone who told me I was only allowed to appreciate their "greatness".

Sure they became experimental and intentionally so at first. The weirdness in Love You is all about mental illness though. People say, 'it's so Brian'. In a way that's true because it is so mentally ill Brian. That's the piece of human wreckage that he's become at the time. There are a lot of people who love the fact that Brian had so many problems though and that is his appeal.

[anazgnos]

I don't think it's anything do with with fetishizing mental illness.  If you don't think the Beach Boys ever got weird, musically, on purpose, I don't know what to tell you.  It's not the only quality, but it was something that I picked up on when I was first getting into them, and I'm sure other people did as well.  Fortunately I didn't encounter anyone who told me I was only allowed to appreciate their "greatness".

Sure they became experimental and intentionally so at first. The weirdness in Love You is all about mental illness though. People say, 'it's so Brian'. In a way that's true because it is so mentally ill Brian. That's the piece of human wreckage that he's become at the time. There are a lot of people who love the fact that Brian had so many problems though and that is his appeal.

That just seems like a really slanted take on that album.  The connection between Love You and, say, the Pet Sounds through Smiley era is that it's personal and insular, it's not necessarily trying hard (or able, for whatever reason) to connect with the outside world.  I think that insularity is a real key component of the Beach Boys world (need I reference "In My Room"?).  Of course it goes along with the exact opposite of that as well, the sort of brash extroversion of a lot of their other work and all the other myriad qualities everybody else brought to the table.

Of course there are queasy moments on Love You and of course I'm not going to insist that he was totally well when he made it, because he wasn't, but...I don't know, it seems like you're saying the album is like watching somebody crap their pants, and that it has no other value.  I've just never heard it that way.  I wish there were four or five more albums of Brian messing around with those synths.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Love You works beautifully for me as a direct sequel to Pet Sounds

Here you have the same narrator from that album several years older, basically crazy and having not really moved on and descending into a sort of Howard Hughes mode.

[SMiLE Brian]

Love You's backing tracks are as great as ever from Brian. The album is awesome even with shaky lyrics and vocals at times.

[SMiLE Brian]

Love You works beautifully for me as a direct sequel to Pet Sounds

Here you have the same narrator from that album several years older, basically crazy and having not really moved on and descending into a sort of Howard Hughes mode.

Agreed thats how I look at the album, its the same guy from Pet Sounds in the harsh world of 1977 after the craziness of the 1960s.

[AndrewHickey]

Sure they became experimental and intentionally so at first. The weirdness in Love You is all about mental illness though. People say, 'it's so Brian'. In a way that's true because it is so mentally ill Brian. That's the piece of human wreckage that he's become at the time. There are a lot of people who love the fact that Brian had so many problems though and that is his appeal.

Let me get this straight - a lot of people can hear beauty in something that doesn't appeal to you, and rather than consider that the problem might be with your musical appreciation, or writing it off as a simple difference in taste, you accuse those people of being happy Brian has had mental illnesses? Do you realise what a horrible accusation that is? I suppose when Brian says it's his favourite, as he sometimes does, he's thinking "Wow, I'm so glad I've had a serious illness for more than forty years"?

Unfortunately nearly all Brian's music has some connection with his mental problems. Do you accuse people who love Break Away (with its lyrics about hearing voices) or Til I Die or Still I Dream Of It of being happy Brian was mentally ill? Loving the art that was created by a mentally ill person doesn't mean being happy about that illness. In fact in my case, as someone who has seen what mental illness can do to people all too closely (I have, among other things, done several years' work on a psychiatric ward), there's a sense in which I love the record more because I see it as Brian - and humanity generally - spitting in the face of mental illness. "Take that, depression/schizoid disorder [insert actual diagnosis] you bastard, I'll make great art despite you!" It's a record made by someone who is *not* letting his problems stop him from working, or stop him from creating great work. Brian made this album in spite of, not because of, his illness, and I listen to it in that spirit.

Your argument is a bit like saying that people who like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony only do so because they're glad he went deaf. Yes, it'd be a different work if he had kept his hearing, and yes a small part of the appeal of the music is knowing that such joyful, uplifting, hopeful music was written by someone who knew he could never hear it himself but did it anyway, but the vast majority of the appeal is because it's one of the great pieces of music of all time. Beethoven would have written different, possibly better, music had he kept his hearing, and Brian would have written different, possibly better, music had his mental health been better, but that shouldn't stop us appreciating the work they *did* produce.

It's not like we're treating it like outsider music - this isn't Jandek or Wesley Willis or something else that is completely outside the boundaries of normal music.

I love Love You because of the almost Weimar cabaret feel of Johnny Carson, because of the way the ii7-III-V7 change at the end of the verses in Honkin' Down The Highway makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, because Solar System into The Night Was So Young into I'll Bet He's Nice is as good a run of three songs in a row as any on any Beach Boys album, because the Imaj7-I7-IV7 changes at the start of Airplane, cliched though they are, evoke perfectly the feeling of flying, because of the interplay between Carl and Brian's voices at the end of Airplane, because it features the best synth sound ever recorded... in short, because it's *great music*.

Yes, the lyrics are simplistic - but no more so than those of, say, Til I Die. It's just that simplistic expressions of joy sound more childish than simplistic expressions of despair. Brian's not a particularly verbal person. But the lyrics are as honest as any he ever wrote, and they help communicate the mood of the music far better than getting in a technically better lyricist would.

Musically, it's a culmination of stuff Brian had been doing since 1971 or so - Funky Pretty, for example, would fit perfectly on this album if you got rid of Blondie and Ricky's voices, right down to the minimalist drums by Brian. And the joking, almost novelty-song elements had been in Brian's music for years - is anything on here *really* stranger than Vegetables, or I'd Love Just Once To See You, or Busy Doin' Nothin' ?

Yes, it wasn't commercial for the time - but it *was*, along with Neil Young's work at the time, the only artistically valid response to the punk music that was coming out at the time from anyone of Brian's generation. And the fact that it wasn't intended as such and Brian had almost certainly never heard the Ramones or Jonathan Richman just makes that even better. There's a reason that musicians like Patti Smith and Peter Buck love the album.

The McCartney II comparison is a very good one - and just listen to tracks like Wonderful Christmastime that McCartney was doing a couple of years after Love You. That's a VERY similar record, production-wise, to Love You. Brian was ahead of the game again.

None of that will persuade anyone who dislikes the album that they should suddenly start loving it, and nor should it - de gustabis non disputandum est and all that - but hopefully it should show you that those of us who love this music, those to whom it has given huge amounts of pleasure over decades, are not unfeeling monsters glorying in the pain of someone we profess to admire, but just music lovers whose tastes happen to differ from your own.

Frankly, I think you owe us an apology.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Love You works beautifully for me as a direct sequel to Pet Sounds

Here you have the same narrator from that album several years older, basically crazy and having not really moved on and descending into a sort of Howard Hughes mode.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: as well as descending into Howard Hughes mode, he'll occasionally hang out at roller skating rinks with Mike and they'll pick up young girls and make sweet love to them when their mamma's are around and will do EVEN MORE when she's not!

[metal flake paint]

Excellent post, Andrew Hickey!

[b00ts]

It is essentially Brian's "McCartney II" - off-the-cuff, under produced, and pure. I can see why it was a commercial failure, but a someone who loves Brian's music, I find the purity of "Love You" refreshing. There is no pretension, no commercial calculation to it. The songs are great, and even the worst lyrics have a charm to them that is quintessentially Brian.

b00ts, I largely agree with you.  But I was trying to listen to it as a non-fan might, or -- as was actually the case -- as someone hearing it for the first time in a long time after hearing others describe it as one of their favorite BB albums.  As someone who knows Brian's story and loves him -- emotional issues, drug damage, seemingly stunted adolescence, etc -- I can appreciate the charm.  But I still couldn't play it for someone without caveats.  For me, it's not the production that damages the album, it's the lyrics.  It probably would have been better for everyone had it been a solo album.

But you have gotten me thinking about personal artistic statements...does one listen to a banal lyric and think "that really represents the artist's current emotional state, or the best he is capable of right now," or "he really didn't work very hard on this, did he?"   We cut him a lot of slack because he's Brian and we love him for everything he has given us, or we're fascinated by his offbeat view.  So I am thinking, would I/should I approach all artists this way, especially those I'm not familiar with?

I know I'm overanalyzing here; bottom line, I like "Love You" but I'm trying to like it more...

That's a tricky question about where the line is between appreciating something for its honesty or seeing it as banal. You may be right that our knowledge about Brian affects the way we hear Love You and I can't quite fully imagine what I would think of it if I were not familiar with Brian.

I think that what makes Brian's slice-of-life lyrics going back to "Busy Doin' Nothing" so passable and, at times, wonderful is that they are without pretension and dryly witty. Again, these are qualities possessed by the Brian Wilson that we all know and love, which lends credence  to your point.

However, the arrangements and compositions of "Beach Boys Love You" prevent it from being outsider art. Sometimes Brian turns his attention to childish themes ("Solar System") and sometimes to adult themes (The Night Was So Young") but Love You hits the mark squarely every single time. This is a skilled composer and arranger who knows what he is doing, and he wants to take us to a very different place than we are used to. This can be hard to fathom for first-time or thirty third-time listeners, but even lyrics like "it's three o'clock/I go to my sink/I pour some milk/And I start to think" work perfectly for me.

Perhaps Love You would have been better off as a solo album, but the lyrics of "Hey Little Tomboy" are infinitely more cringe-inducing and would require infinitely more explanation than any aspect of Love You, if I deigned to play it for any of my friends!

Anyway, good on you for trying with Love You. One day, it will Love You back.

[phirnis]

If you want to hear music by the BB entirely devoid of any traces of mental illness, I can highly recommend Bruce Johnston's solo work.

[Alex]

I think Love You works great along side Jonathan Richman, Daniel Johnston, Syd Barrett`s more whimsical stuff, the Television Personalities, early Barenaked Ladies, Beat Happening, Jad Fair, the Shaggs...

[Nicko1234]

Frankly, I think you owe us an apology.

Not in the least.

There ARE a lot of people who love the fact that Brian has suffered from so many problems. You can see it on some of the boards with the comments from people who know so little about the music but defend the person so staunchly (and even hand out the occasional death threat to those who criticize him). You can see it at the gigs with the people who incessantly shout, 'I love you' even when Brian is clearly tired of hearing it. Brian has become a figurehead to some for the cause of overcoming mental health problems.

You also see in so many reviews the term 'crazy' being used as a compliment when referring to Brian's work. Some seem to savour the suffering...

I actually like quite a bit of Love You. But I like it because there is some quality stuff there (in amongst the bilge) and not solely down to the weirdness. My original comment (OTT because I'd had a bad day and not meant solely for the poster I was replying to) was intended to reflect that weird and good Brian songs are good, weird and bad Brian songs are bad. Some of the more lunatic Brianistas seem to think that any crazy musical excrescences that Brian came out with should never be criticized and that crazy in itself is enough.

[AndrewHickey]

There ARE a lot of people who love the fact that Brian has suffered from so many problems. You can see it on some of the boards with the comments from people who know so little about the music but defend the person so staunchly (and even hand out the occasional death threat to those who criticize him).

No-one who 'knows little about the music' has even *heard* Love You, so obviously you're talking about different people than those who like that album. I've personally never seen a death threat because someone's criticised Brian, but your attempts to tar those of us who like the album with that brush, when there are aggressive idiots who will make that kind of comment on *any* subject, are if anything digging yourself deeper.

You can see it at the gigs with the people who incessantly shout, 'I love you' even when Brian is clearly tired of hearing it.

Funny, when I went to see Paul McCartney last year a load of people shouted that at him, too. Must have been because they were glorying in his mental illness, too. Oh wait...

Brian has become a figurehead to some for the cause of overcoming mental health problems.

So now you're equating people who think it's a good thing he's *overcome* his problems, assuming he has, with people who think it's a good thing he had the problems in the first place.

Some of the more lunatic Brianistas seem to think that any crazy musical excrescences that Brian came out with should never be criticized and that crazy in itself is enough.

Name five, if this is so prevalent.

The fact is, you accused those of us who like Love You - purely on the basis of liking the album - of "lov[ing] the fact that Brian had so many problems". That is not an accusation you should make lightly, and it *is* one for which you owe an apology, or would if you had any decency. Accusing others of glorying in others' illness is a horrible, malicious accusation, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

[SBonilla]

Love You works beautifully for me as a direct sequel to Pet Sounds

Here you have the same narrator from that album several years older, basically crazy and having not really moved on and descending into a sort of Howard Hughes mode.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: as well as descending into Howard Hughes mode, he'll occasionally hang out at roller skating rinks with Mike and they'll pick up young girls and make sweet love to them when their mamma's are around and will do EVEN MORE when she's not!

It was an ice skating rink nearly caddy corner to Brother Studios.  Do you suppose he would go there and hang? Maybe he took his kids there. Do we know? I don't.  I never thought the song was weird, just a little on the innocent side.

[Nicko1234]

No-one who 'knows little about the music' has even *heard* Love You, so obviously you're talking about different people than those who like that album. I've personally never seen a death threat because someone's criticised Brian, but your attempts to tar those of us who like the album with that brush, when there are aggressive idiots who will make that kind of comment on *any* subject, are if anything digging yourself deeper.

As I said, I wasn't talking about Love You alone specifically at all and my post was OTT. The meaning, as mentioned again above, was that weirdness and crazyness in itself isn't enough. Anyone can be weird and crazy. That's all. Nothing more in it than that.

[b00ts]

There ARE a lot of people who love the fact that Brian has suffered from so many problems. You can see it on some of the boards with the comments from people who know so little about the music but defend the person so staunchly (and even hand out the occasional death threat to those who criticize him).

No-one who 'knows little about the music' has even *heard* Love You, so obviously you're talking about different people than those who like that album. I've personally never seen a death threat because someone's criticised Brian, but your attempts to tar those of us who like the album with that brush, when there are aggressive idiots who will make that kind of comment on *any* subject, are if anything digging yourself deeper.

You can see it at the gigs with the people who incessantly shout, 'I love you' even when Brian is clearly tired of hearing it.

Funny, when I went to see Paul McCartney last year a load of people shouted that at him, too. Must have been because they were glorying in his mental illness, too. Oh wait...

Brian has become a figurehead to some for the cause of overcoming mental health problems.

So now you're equating people who think it's a good thing he's *overcome* his problems, assuming he has, with people who think it's a good thing he had the problems in the first place.

Some of the more lunatic Brianistas seem to think that any crazy musical excrescences that Brian came out with should never be criticized and that crazy in itself is enough.

Name five, if this is so prevalent.

The fact is, you accused those of us who like Love You - purely on the basis of liking the album - of "lov[ing] the fact that Brian had so many problems". That is not an accusation you should make lightly, and it *is* one for which you owe an apology, or would if you had any decency. Accusing others of glorying in others' illness is a horrible, malicious accusation, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

I understand why you are upset, but I think it is true that people glorify Brian's mental illness. I am a big fan of Love You, and I don't like the fact that his mental illness affects peoples' judgment of the album to the extent that it does. I don't think Love You needs to be enjoyed ironically or condescendingly. It is simply a great album with some off-kilter lyrical themes. Then again, look at the lyrical themes of most of the music we are bombarded with - love, infatuation, heartbreak, etc. People are so used to the same old BS that anything different strikes them as "too weird." Love You is refreshing for this reason among others.

Johnny Carson is a prime example. It is one of the most rock and roll songs The Beach Boys have ever recorded, and it is about a late night talk show host. Not just any late night host, though - THE late night host. So perfect. Maybe if it was a song about getting dumped by a girl, it would be more widely accepted... but f*** that! The subject matter is part of what makes it great.

I have read reviews and articles about Brian's music referring to him as a 'vegetable' and it always betrays a lack of knowledge on the part of the writer. It is galling and very annoying. Many people stigmatize his mental illness, and others fetishize it. Both viewpoints are ridiculous and childish, and anyone who says that Love You is only able to be enjoyed by people who glorify Brian's mental illness is missing the point, losing the plot, and depriving themselves of a great work of art by a true master.

[Nicko1234]

Both viewpoints are ridiculous and childish, and anyone who says that Love You is only able to be enjoyed by people who glorify Brian's mental illness is missing the point, losing the plot, and depriving themselves of a great work of art by a true master.

Indeed but nobody has said that.

[Wirestone]

Love You is certainly eccentric. But I wouldn't say it's crazy. Brian was not particularly in a bad place when he made the album; people going through an episode of severe mental illness are often unable to do anything. That was certainly the case with BW from 73-75 or so, but not in 1977.

I think several things are going on with the record.

One of them is that Brian is actually trying to write an album from the viewpoint of a teenager, or a more generic "young" viewpoint. Songs like "Let Us Go On this Way," "Solar System" and "Roller Skating Child" (and "Hey Little Tomboy," for that matter) all come from the point of view of a younger singer. Brian's not dumb, and he certainly understood (as a Randy Newman fan must) that it's possible to write songs in character. The fact that these songs are sung by croaky sounding 30-somethings adds a layer of bizarre irony, which is probably not intentional.

Another is that Brian is writing slice of life songs again. Something like "The Night Was So Young," or "Airplane" are little vignettes from his life, written in a very simple and direct way. I think "My Diane" comes from around this time, too. These tend to be the songs people like most from this era of Brian's work, because you have the painful honesty matched with the stripped-down production. It sounds very compelling.

Then you have Brian expressing his funny side. I mean, "Johnny Carson" is clearly meant to be a humorous song. Not silly -- there's care and attention there -- but Brian wants to entertain us with something novel. For that matter, "Ding Dang" is much the same way.

Finally, you have some dreck. It wouldn't be a BW/BB project without some filler, so you have a couple of legitimately terrible tracks. "Love is a Woman," I'm looking at you.

The real puzzle of the album is, because it's so singular, it can be easy to miss that all of these things are going on. The production is very consistent in its demo-style sound, and the vocals never quite lift off. The mix is kind of muddy. Brian often sounds a little self-conscious when he's singing (it's not as bad as BW88, but it's certainly a precursor to that style). So you have to listen to the songs very carefully.

But it's not an expression of mental illness, any more than Smile was, or Smiley Smile, or even California Girls. It's pretty artistically self-directed. I do think it suggests that Brian had a lot of ideas for the band's future, not all of them artistically congruent. Where his illness and the people around him let him down was that he wasn't pressed to take a consistent direction, or produce the tracks a bit more fully, or even pick a slightly better selection of songs.

As a document of Brian's last fully self-aware, self-directed creative period, though, it can't be beat.

[b00ts]

Both viewpoints are ridiculous and childish, and anyone who says that Love You is only able to be enjoyed by people who glorify Brian's mental illness is missing the point, losing the plot, and depriving themselves of a great work of art by a true master.

Indeed but nobody has said that.

I am not referring to or accusing anyone in this thread or on this board specifically. I am just speaking generally. It seems to be a pervasive attitude amongst certain music fans that Brian is just "wacked out" of his mind.

[b00ts]

Love You is certainly eccentric. But I wouldn't say it's crazy. Brian was not particularly in a bad place when he made the album; people going through an episode of severe mental illness are often unable to do anything. That was certainly the case with BW from 73-75 or so, but not in 1977.

I think several things are going on with the record.

One of them is that Brian is actually trying to write an album from the viewpoint of a teenager, or a more generic "young" viewpoint. Songs like "Let Us Go On this Way," "Solar System" and "Roller Skating Child" (and "Hey Little Tomboy," for that matter) all come from the point of view of a younger singer. Brian's not dumb, and he certainly understood (as a Randy Newman fan must) that it's possible to write songs in character. The fact that these songs are sung by croaky sounding 30-somethings adds a layer of bizarre irony, which is probably not intentional.

Another is that Brian is writing slice of life songs again. Something like "The Night Was So Young," or "Airplane" are little vignettes from his life, written in a very simple and direct way. I think "My Diane" comes from around this time, too. These tend to be the songs people like most from this era of Brian's work, because you have the painful honesty matched with the stripped-down production. It sounds very compelling.

Then you have Brian expressing his funny side. I mean, "Johnny Carson" is clearly meant to be a humorous song. Not silly -- there's care and attention there -- but Brian wants to entertain us with something novel. For that matter, "Ding Dang" is much the same way.

Finally, you have some dreck. It wouldn't be a BW/BB project without some filler, so you have a couple of legitimately terrible tracks. "Love is a Woman," I'm looking at you.

The real puzzle of the album is, because it's so singular, it can be easy to miss that all of these things are going on. The production is very consistent in its demo-style sound, and the vocals never quite lift off. The mix is kind of muddy. Brian often sounds a little self-conscious when he's singing (it's not as bad as BW88, but it's certainly a precursor to that style). So you have to listen to the songs very carefully.

But it's not an expression of mental illness, any more than Smile was, or Smiley Smile, or even California Girls. It's pretty artistically self-directed. I do think it suggests that Brian had a lot of ideas for the band's future, not all of them artistically congruent. Where his illness and the people around him let him down was that he wasn't pressed to take a consistent direction, or produce the tracks a bit more fully, or even pick a slightly better selection of songs.

As a document of Brian's last fully self-aware, self-directed creative period, though, it can't be beat.

Very well-stated, Wirestone. Brian knew what he was doing when he made Love You and it is not the "outsider art" that many think it is. Also, I agree about "Love Is A Woman;" I adore the rest of BBLY but that song doesn't do it for me.

[adamghost]

This thread kind of illustrates why LIGHT ALBUM works for me.  The production is commercial in a way that's appropriate for its time (as opposed to MIU, which sounds thin and cheesy to me), the songs range from mediocre to great, but there's no real horrible bummers there, the lyrics are dignified and don't delve into nostalgia.  Most of peoples' problem with it stems from HCTN, but I happen to be one of the few who think it's awesome (though they probably should have used the single edit for the album).

I totally understand why folks would prefer, from an artistic standpoint, LOVE YOU.  Got it.  But in terms of trying for a hit record in a way that actually made sense to the marketplace and the band's sound and legacy, LIGHT ALBUM comes pretty close in a way none of the other late period ones do.  Yeah, the disco thing was ill-advised in some ways but let me tell you...I just listened to Elton John's single "Victim Of Love" and gang, HCTN does not come anywhere near as being as bad, by-the-numbers, or totally worthless as that piece of crap does.  And I loves me Elton John as much as I love the BBs.

[Wirestone]

This thread kind of illustrates why LIGHT ALBUM works for me.  The production is commercial in a way that's appropriate for its time (as opposed to MIU, which sounds thin and cheesy to me), the songs range from mediocre to great, but there's no real horrible bummers there, the lyrics are dignified and don't delve into nostalgia.  Most of peoples' problem with it stems from HCTN, but I happen to be one of the few who think it's awesome (though they probably should have used the single edit for the album).

I totally understand why folks would prefer, from an artistic standpoint, LOVE YOU.  Got it.  But in terms of trying for a hit record in a way that actually made sense to the marketplace and the band's sound and legacy, LIGHT ALBUM comes pretty close in a way none of the other late period ones do.  Yeah, the disco thing was ill-advised in some ways but let me tell you...I just listened to Elton John's single "Victim Of Love" and gang, HCTN does not come anywhere near as being as bad, by-the-numbers, or totally worthless as that piece of crap does.  And I loves me Elton John as much as I love the BBs.

Although, to be fair, Victim of Love was kind of a side project. Elton didn't write any of the material, or have anything to do with the playing or arrangements. He has plausible deniability!

[tpesky]

I definitely agree Adam about the Light album being more commercially viable.  I still think HCTN's biggest problem on the album is it's ridiculous length. I don't think it would be despised nearly as much if it were 4:00 minutes long let's say.  It would also help if the album had another up tempo song so it would not be so jarring either.

I will admit to not being a huge fan of Love You. I like some songs but it just never worked for me. That being said, there is no way it fits into any commercial market at all and the band really could have used that. Commercial, but not selling out which I think the Light Album does well.